[LAU] Controllers and stuff for live performance

[Ken Restivo]

On Tue, Oct 13, 2009 at 08:01:30PM +0100, philicorda wrote:
> On Tue, 2009-10-13 at 15:13 +0200, Carlos Sanchiavedraz wrote:
> > 
> 
> > 
> > So you say something like to achieve little variations of notes
> > ("vibrato" alike) depending on the key/finger movement, isn't it? I
> > think there is something like that in really expensive
> > keyboards/controllers, but not sure.
> 
> Some of the older Yamaha organs have this.
> The D-85 has a synth keyboard with 'side to side' sensitivity that can
> be routed to filter/LFOs etc. No midi as it's a monophonic analog synth.
> The whole keyboard moves as you shift your fingers.
> 
> I'm mentioning it as these old organs can be sometimes bought for next
> to nothing, and it's a helluva lot of sound for the money! Not that far
> from a GX1. :)
> 
> http://www.electone.com/museum/index.html?i=290
> 

I got to play a relatively new GX-1 when I was about 12 years
old. It was in the living room of a classmate's house. We were
running around his house, I wandered past the living room, saw that
thing, had no idea of what it was or how expensive it was, but I
had been playing organ since I was about 6 and had no fear of
things with many keys and lots of buttons... rather, I was
like... I GOTTA play that thing! It may not have been exactly
a GX-1, it may have been a home model variation of it. But
it was definitely THAT beast.

I didn't realize that my classmate's dad was (obviously) very
wealthy. I'm pretty sure he was a lawyer or something and IIRC
had something to do with the entertainment business. We weren't
really close friends; this was the first time I'd been to his
house. At the time, suburban families in New York had Baldwin
"fun machine" organs in their living rooms as a matter of course.
This wasn't no Baldwin. Again, this dude had some serious money.

Anyway, no kids were allowed near the thing, but somehow I was
able to talk his mom into letting me play it-- probably because
she felt like I knew what I was doing (I mean, I'd played
church organs by that time, theater organs, this wasn't no
big deal to me). She stood there terrified as I turned it on
and started playing it. My friend was forbidden to touch
it, but as I jammed away his mom let him jam along with me.
After a while she realized we weren't going to blow the thing
up, and went off to fix dinner. We did this until my mom
came and picked me up around dinnertime.

It had a cassette tape recorder bolted underneath the lowest
manual, and I recorded some of what we did. I doubt the tape
exists anymore. I do remember that it sounded SWEET. I spent
a lot of time playing the little chicklet-keys mono synth
manual on it.

-ken